What Lies Along The Banks of the River

Join Josh Baker and Eddie Debord as they hone their skills as adventurers and explorers and prepare for their amazing journey in the Amazon Best Seller, River Rocks!An enjoyable, quick-read novella that will introduce you to some of the main characters and give you a taste of their adventurous life along the gentle river that flows behind their Appalachian homes. Here's a sample: A couple window holes were hand-sawed into the sides, and after two weeks, and a lot of sore muscles and exhaustion, we were done! We had our very first, very own, private treehouse. It wasn't pretty at all. In fact, it was rather ugly, but it was ours.At eight feet by eight feet, it was huge—plenty of room for us. The trees were oriented, thus the walls too, that the two windows we cut, both faced the river. I could sit by one window and Eddie the other, and we both had a view of the mighty Elk.After a week or so of clearing out spider webs from the inside of our hideaway, we went to a lumber supply store and, for about five bucks, bought some rigid but thin plastic sheeting—just enough to cover the windows. We simply used my dad's staple gun to install it. Our treehouse still had cracks here and there, but at least we weren't making it easy for them anymore. For the first week, each time we would go to our clubhouse we would bring along improvements. Newspaper to ball up and stuff into these cracks, a battery powered light that we hung overhead, a small table we built to play cards on or eat off, a shelf, a radio, and bug spray we used on the outside to help deter intruders. Little did we know that in a few weeks, intruders of a different sort were going to be our biggest problem.It was a Saturday morning of that first summer, and I met Eddie at his house. We took our fishing poles and some SPAM for bait and headed down to the treehouse woods to see how the fishing was there. Our thoughts were that part of the river was difficult to access, so maybe it was never fished before. Possibly big catfish waiting for a big meal and that sounded good for a Saturday morning.We stepped from the well-maintained lawns and into the grove of trees by the river where our treehouse sat proudly, four-hundred feet away and twelve feet in the air. As we walked on, Eddie, who was on point leading the way, stopped, and pointed to the ground at footprints in the muddy earth. He instinctively looked at my daily sneakers, but not his own, knowing his tread pattern without checking.Someone's been here, he said. Two people, he finished.I studied the tracks. One seemed like a deep, aggressive shoe tread, but not to go so far as to be a boot. And the other was completely flat, like a worn-out Chuck Taylor Converse. They certainly were not ours, and they seemed very fresh. We walked on and found more of the same tracks. I made another observation. I was only thirteen years old at that time and I was in the very early days of my future as a woodsman, tracker, hiker, backpacker... whatever title one wanted to give me, but I made an observation and pointed it out to Eddie.Hey Ed, these prints are only going one way. I then pointed at the far end of the grove of woods and continued my observation. And this is the only way in and out of here. The other end is chain-link fence all the way to the river's edge.Standing in silence for a moment, we listened. Frogs, river bugs, and distant traffic out on highway 119 was all we heard. Come on. Let's go, Eddie said.So, we walked on and the closer we got to our treehouse, the more we heard it. Murmurs of conversation, laughing, and shuffling of movement inside. We were appalled and growing angry at the thought of someone else occupying our treehouse... that we built. After a few more steps, there we were, standing underneath it, listening to the intruders enjoying the fruits of our labor, and even playing our radio.